The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

"The best part of my second memoir that I'm working on right now ... is right now, when you're actually doing the writing, and so that's a good thing to keep in mind when you're perpetually striving. Getting to do the art is the awesome thing about it," says Courtney Kocak, author of the memoir Girl Gone Wild. Courtney Kocak is here today and I read her debut memoir Girl Gone Wild over the summer to interview her as part of a debut author panel for Hippocamp. Finally getting around to inviting these jabronis on the show for a little more in depth convos. Courtney is something of a creative swiss army knife. She's an author, podcaster, comedian, screenwriter, substacker. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Slate, HuffPost, and many, many more. Courtney follows through on shit. She's produced a bunch of podcasts and currently hosts 3 of her own with over 2 million downloads. That's like 2 million more than mine, Private Parts Unknown, The Bleeders, and Podcast Bestie. She teaches writing and podcasting for Writing Workshops, Write or Die and Roadmap Writers. You can find her on many socials, but she's at courtneykocak on IG. In this episode we talk about: * Diffusing the bomb * Having perspective vs. the rawness of the moment * Using an ethical reader * The empathy for her younger self * Being like Teflon * Arrival fallacy * Delusional dreams * The best part of the process * Getting to do the art * Platform as ecosystem and more I'd pair this episode with Lidia Yuknavitch, Rax King, and Elisa Gabbert, just to name three. Parting shot and why do we even still listen to these things.

"We hit some roadblocks. We thought when we started working on this story we were going to have a huge amount of material, and then as we moved along, we realized we were working with fragments and with shards, and some people were not going to be available. Some people had died. Some court records that we thought we were going to be able to pull were not available, and so it it was a four year grind really, and so the fact that it was two of us together made it a lot a lot easier," says Alessio Perrone, co-author of The Rise and Fall of a Supercop for The Atavist. Today we have yet another co-bylined set of dudes, which is really skewing my gender balance of the show, but that'll all balance out. It's the third co-bylined set of dudes I've had this year, two by the atavist, and it's Berber Verpoest and Alessio Perrone and they wrote The Rise and Fall of a Supercop for the Atavist. Willy Van Mechelen was one of the most celebrated police officers in Belgian history, responsible for solving infamous kidnappings, robbery and murders. Then Antwerp' s lucrative drug trade came calling. Breaking bad much? Visit magazine.atavist.com [http://magazine.atavist.com/] to read this thrilling story. Alessio Perrone is a writer and editor whose work has been published by the Guardian, Time, Slate, and Wired, among others. He's based in Milan, Italy. Berber Verpoest's journalism and documentaries have appeared through VRT, Vice, AJ+, NOP 1, and Al Arabiya, among others. He's based out of Belgium. Wild story of the super cop who breaks bad. In this episode we learn: * How they worked together on this piece * How they find hard to track down people * Working together in the cloud * And being dogged about getting that crucial interview up to the last moment

"I always imagine writing is like every thought you have, every idea you have, everything you've learned, every experience you've had regarding a certain subject, it's kind of like a ball of yarn in your mind, and the writing is taking the string and pulling it out straight," says Chuck Klosterman, author of Football and Rock*. "Wouldn't you know I recorded yet another LIVE podcast at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene. That's right, the next day I woke with a CRUSHING hangover, but before that I spoke to Chuck Klosterman over a couple River King IPAs to talk about his two latest books Football and Rock*: An Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music. It's published by Da Capo. You're damn right. This podcast is going places. It might be going to hell, but it's going places. Chuck Klosterman has reached post-interview status in that he doesn't really need to do these kinds of things, but he does, and I was lucky to get the chance to not only interview him, but to do it in person in front of about 40 frothing Klosterman fans. Does Chuck Klosterman even need an introduction. I mentioned earlier that he's post-interview, but he's also post-website. He's so popular he doesn't have to live by the rules of us mortals. I believe he still hangs out on Twitter and you can find his fan page on Facebook. He's the author of 14 books that range from novels, to short stories, to essays, to big ideas and little ideas. Some of these titles include I Wear the Black Hat, But What If We're Wrong? Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, The Nineties: A Book, The Visible Man, Fargo Rock City, Killing Yourself to Live, Football, and his latest, Rock*. Many of his books are NYT bestsellers. He's a frequent guest with Bill Simmons on the Bill Simmons Podcast. He was at one time the Ethicist for The New York Times and has written for Esquire, Grantland, and many other places. He became a bit of a star at Spin Magazine in the early aughts, and from there, he boarded a rocket ship and has become one of the most distinct, singular, entertaining voices in culture writing. In this episode, we talk about: * Football and why the violence matters * How his brother in law was instrumental in Chuck becoming a professional writer * The moment Chuck realized he'd turn out just like his father * The struggle of writing a fiction book with real names * The moment where I look like a total buffoon * Taking the premise of Rock* and applying it to a hypothetical world where Infinite Jest became what Eat, Pray, Love became * And a rich Q&A where Chuck riffs on unifying themes in essay collections, a movie cameo, AI, and a few other things Be sure you're following the show on IG at creativenonfictionpodcast, or don't, I don't care, parting shot on the what does it all mean, but for now, why don't we queue up the riff and get on with the show? Huh!

"For me, it's about being a grown up. I think what I projected even at an early age was I've been doing this a while. I plan on doing it for years to come. There's nothing about me that suggests I'm going to scoop up your words and run away and never be heard from again. I'm not leaving town. I'm not leaving the career. You can trust me because it's in my best interest to be trustworthy, too. And then, of course, I listen more than I talk," says Robert Kolker, the bestselling author of The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia. It's Robert Kolker, returning to the podcast to talk about his latest book, which is, I have to say, the odds-on favorite to win the 2nd annual CNFy for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. Last year Cassidy Randall won the wooden plaque. If all awards are ultimately meaningless, I'm happy to contribute. Oh, yeah, you want the book title don't you? It's The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia. It's published by Double Day. I don't say this as hyperbole: This book is a masterpiece. Bob is also the author of Hidden Valley Road, a No. 1 NYT bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club and a top 10 book of the year by the NYT, WaPo, and the fat cats on Wall Street at the Wall Street Journal. The Vanishing Family was one of those "noted books" in The New Yorker. Yeah, it's THAT good. I'll give you a little more about Bob in a minute. Bob Kolker is a writer for the New York Times Magazine and his work has also appeared in the Atavist Magazine, check out his last appearance on Ep. 385. His journalism most often takes the form of gripping, humane narratives. He's a national magazine award finalist with work appearing in Wired, The Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Oprah Magazine, and New York magazine. It's … impressive. Learn more about Bob at robertkolker.com [http://robertkolker.com/] and follow him on IG @bobkolker. You're in for a fun ride with this podcast. Among many things, we talk about: * The gear he uses * Timeline files * His crisis of confidence at the start of a story * What is the self? * The power of timelining * His reportorial approach * Interviewing chronologically as a means to creating a rough draft * Balancing the confidential information of the family in his reporting * And a lot more, a LOT more. Parting shot this week about having an emergency book nearby. I recorded this as a video for the Patreon crew. No b-roll, but I might go in and pretty up my parting shots as vlogs for Patreon and YouTube. Visit Patreon.com/cnfpod [http://patreon.com/cnfpod] to see the first video. Again, no b-roll so it's just me riffing.

"It's all about consistency, and I know that that's the most boring answer on the planet, and the answer I didn't want to hear when I started my Substack three years ago. I just published every single week, trying out different niches, seeing what I could offer value in, until I got exactly where I wanted to land with it," says ghost writer and author Amy Suto. I got an email out of the blue, wouldn't you know, and it was this writer Amy Suto, who wanted to come on and talk about ghost writing and stuff of that nature. She is very clearly someone who doesn't need the attention. She's doing, let's say, quite well for herself. She has a $250,000+ substack and is the author of the book Write for Money & Power: The Anti-Starving Artists' Guide to Becoming a SEVEN-figure Writer. I'll take five figures. Maybe I should read that book. Amy is a story factory. She's a ghost writer to many high end folks. She runs online courses through her Substack like Make Substack Your Job, the 6 Week Substack Sprint Workshop, her Substack is her ecosystem and she has mastered it. A little bit more on Amy in a little bit. Amy Suto is based in San Francisco. She used to be a TV writer but eventually wanted more agency in her writing life. She serializes fiction from her Substack and offers tutorials and classes and a hub for sharing writing opportunities. I'm always a bit weary when you put all your eggs in the basket of a social media platform like Substack but I'm not the guy you want to take money advice from. Look at what I do, then do the opposite. Better yet, look at what Amy does. You can learn more about her at amysuto.com, sutoscience.com, and follow her on Instagram @sutoscience. In this episode we talk about: * TV writing * Ghost writing as fly on the wall * Inhabiting the client's voice * Memoir touch points * Needing to like the client * Battling voices * Charging what you're worth so you don't get burned out * Branding * Conflicting memories * Creative boundaries * Building a substack to $260,000 revenue * Asking the best questions * Volume over everything * And the great talk by Mark Duplass about the calvary not coming This episode will pair well with Jan Friedman's appearance, any of Jen A. Miller's appearances, as well Jennifer Goforth Gregory.